Inspiration

I'm a USAF veteran who once worked on air traffic control radios, I like flying, and I'm always curious about what is happening around me.

What it does

Checks Flight Aware's API and gets all of the aircraft flying within 200 miles of where you are, and updates a map display of only Delta's flights. I see putting it on a wall mounted monitor much like a picture, but it reflects movement. Think of a fishbowl, but with airplanes.

How I built it

JavaScript, vim, and lots of caffeine.

Challenges I ran into

Passenger air traffic, it turns out, is very light in the early hours of Sunday morning. For several hours I was without input data.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I tried to choose a project that I could reasonably built a prototype of in a weekend, and I chose well.

What I learned

That having access to data, and planning ahead to have data to work with, is The Right Thing.

What's next for Delta (Blues)

Finishing the interface, so the dots actually look like planes and the status of each flight is displayed with each aircraft market. Then it's going to run on a spare machine and hang on my wall near my desk.

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